


Last Night, First Dawn

by Alexander_L



Series: You and I and the stories we tell – A collection of Ferdinand/Hubert oneshots [9]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Ferdibert Week 2020 (Fire Emblem), M/M, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Soft Ferdinand von Aegir, Soft Hubert von Vestra, Thank God We're Alive Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:27:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25938904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexander_L/pseuds/Alexander_L
Summary: The night the shadow war against the Agarthans ends, Ferdinand and Hubert are too exhausted to celebrate with their friends. But in the morning, it finally sinks in that the fighting is over, they are both miraculously still alive, and a new free life is ahead of them.Written for Ferdibert Week 2020CW: explicit sex, post-battle angst
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Series: You and I and the stories we tell – A collection of Ferdinand/Hubert oneshots [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1794589
Comments: 10
Kudos: 97
Collections: Ferdibert Week 2020





	Last Night, First Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> I realize now that when it says "Free Day" on the Ferdibert Week schedule it just means that you can write whatever you want, but at first I thought that it was the prompt itself and thinking about it led me to consider the relief that they would feel that first day they realized they were free from the shackles of the war. So here is a short piece inspired by a not-prompt.
> 
> I had a much longer story I'd mentioned on Twitter for the Nightmare prompt but I didn't have any time to write this week and didn't want to rush the ending of it since it's pretty serious. I will publish it later not for Ferdibert Week but just on its own. It won't be part of the 'soft' series since it's pretty violent.
> 
> Anyways, thank you so much to all the amazing creators who did art, stories and posts for Ferdibert Week 2020! You brought me so much joy and made a rough week bearable. Y'all are so talented and inspiring!

###  Ferdinand

  
  


We celebrated the end of the Imperial War with indomitable energy born of the relief of it being, at last,  _ over _ . 

I remember that night well – singing loudly in the dining hall with Petra and Dorothea and Caspar, getting goaded into a friendly fistfight with Felix by Hubert and Sylvain, convincing Edelgard and Byleth to try some of the Gloucester rosé Lorenz smuggled out of his father’s cellars to share with us. It was the first time I ever saw Edelgard tipsy and given how delighted she was with the sweet sparkling wine, so different from the dry and somber Adrestrian blends, it ended up being the first of many.

I wonder, as I stomp my shovel into the half-frozen ground, whether I will remember this night as clearly in the years to come.

Tonight we ended the shadow war against Those Who Slither in the Dark with a decisive strike on Shambhala that took down the last of their leaders and leveled their city and their cursed laboratories to rubble and ash.

But there’s no wine, no feast, no friends gathering round to rejoice in the fact that we are all still alive. It is just Hubert and I digging graves into the cold ground of the Hrym mountains outside Shambhala for the soldiers that fell in our battalions. The troops we took into Shambhala today were not the ones with families waiting back home. We took only volunteers, people with nothing to lose, because it would have been folly to promise that we would all make it out alive on this last perilous mission. Because of this, there are no family graveyards to bury them in. They will have to lay to rest in this little patch of mountain wilderness.

I glance at Hubert as he wipes the sweat from his brow and plunges his shovel into the earth again determinedly. 

I was so afraid that come moonrise tonight I would be digging his grave or he would be digging mine. The surreality of the quiet night, devoid even of cricketsong and tree rustlings, punctuated only by the scrape of our shovels and grunts and sighs of exertion, does little to shake the incredulous daze from my mind.

He and I, both of us, together, we have survived. We have made it from the dawn of the war to its final dusk.

I know not how. There were a thousand times we came so close to death as to necessitate a near miracle to escape its hungry jaws. I have never believed in luck and we no longer have a goddess or saints to carve us fates, so the fact that he and I, both of us, together, have survived is almost too much to fathom.

Emptying the last shovelful, Hubert sets the tool aside and grabs the legs of a soldier. I pick up their arms and together we lower them down into the grave.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, return to the earth that sustains the world you gave your life to save. Rest in the knowledge that your sacrifice will not be in vain,” I whisper hoarsely. I have lost count of how many times I have recited the words tonight.

We stand for a moment in respectful silence, then we set to work filling in the grave. When it is done, Hubert smooths out the dirt and I construct a small cairn of rocks, placing a handful of wildflowers atop it.

We will come back to this place later to mark it with proper gravestones and memorialize it. For now, this simple expression of gratitude and acknowledgement will have to suffice.

“That’s the last one,” Hubert says, his voice as cold and gravelly as the Hrym soil we have toiled against all night.

I nod numbly.

He holds out his hand and I take it despite how sweaty and rough his skin is from handling the shovel for hours. Clasping it tightly, he leads me back to our horses and helps me up into the saddle. Even though I do not need the help, for the wounds I received in our battle were not severe and have been tended to well with healing magic, I let him nonetheless. Taking care of people brings Hubert a sense of normalcy that he finds comforting and I imagine he needs that right now.

Together we ride down the trail from the mountains towards the small village at its base where we reconvene with the others. Byleth, Caspar and Jeritza are all confined to their beds with injuries whilst Linhardt and Lysithea look after them. Sylvain and Felix have left after only an hour of rest to fly by wyvern back to their own territories. And Holst, Hilda, Marianne and Claude did not stop for the night in the Hrym village, choosing to take the northern road down the mountains straight back to Goneril territory. 

With Edelgard back in Enbarr to defend against any possible counterstrikes, that leaves Hubert and I on our own with no opportunity to assemble everyone together to celebrate. But my heart does not feel capable of rallying and feeling joy right now anyways. I am too bone-weary and hollowed out to do anything but collapse into the inn bed without thought for how dirty and bloodstained I am. Hubert lies down next to me wordlessly. Rolling over to tuck my arm around his waist and pull his back to rest against my chest, I lean my face against his neck and fall swiftly asleep.

I awake from fitful dreams to the sound of Hubert filling a bath. Sitting up, I stretch my sore arms and yawn, blinking sleepily and watching as he heats the bath with a fire spell. 

“Good morning,” he says, turning to look at me when he hears me moving around.

I stare at him, too dazed to reply as he walks over and holds out his hand. “You’re filthy. Come here.”

I allow him to pull me to my feet, murmuring in a delayed way, “Good morning.”

Pale silver light is only just staring to filter through the thin gap in the curtains and in the half-light, half-shadow Hubert almost looks like a ghost. But his hands are strong and warm, reassuring me that he is real and alive and so am I.

He strips off my clothes and soaks a washrag in hot water. As I struggle blearily to wake up and come back to reality, he sets to work scrubbing the worst of the blood and dirt from my body so I do not sully the bathwater too much. His touch is so incredibly soothing it persuades me to indulge in a brief bit of selfishness and I close my eyes and let him take care of me.

Getting down on his knees, he cleans the last bit of blood off a hastily patched cut on my leg. Then he puts his hands on my hips and tugs me closer, pressing kisses into my thighs and hips and stomach with reverent gentleness. I stir from my hazy state at last and comb my fingers through his hair, gazing down at him with such love aching in my heart it chokes back any words I could possibly think to say.

Finally I manage to whisper, “I love you.”

He looks up at me, his eyes full of a painful kind of joy, brightly and piercingly poignant. “Ferdinand, I- You...” He trails off and stands up, taking off his clothes and stepping into the bath.

After I join him and we settle down into the water, finding the best way for our bodies to fit in the cramped space, he breathes a long sigh of relief, closing his eyes and letting the heat soothe the tension and pain in his worn-out body.

“What were you going to say?” I ask, swirling my fingers idly through the water.

Hubert opens his eyes and looks at me silently for a long moment then says, “I don’t know how to put it into words.”

“Then show me.”

At the invitation, he leans forward so quickly some of the water sloshes over the edge of the tub. Taking my face in his hands, he kisses me fiercely and I struggle for a second to keep up with him. Then I lean back and wrap my legs around his waist so he can prop himself up over me and I kiss him with everything I have.

It is a fumbling, frantic affair for a few minutes as he desperately tries to communicate what he does not know how else to say and I just hang on and let myself be swept away with the emotion. Then at last he pulls back to say in between panting breaths, “I was never sure we would survive this, especially you. You are unbearably reckless and always on the front lines of a fight. I have been waiting for so many years for the day when I would lose you. But now-”

“Now it is over,” I finish, “and I am still here in your arms.”

He clutches me tightly and buries his face in my neck, murmuring, “I love you so much… so fucking much.”

“I love you too. I can scarcely believe we made it this far either,” I whisper.

He kisses me again, slowly this time and with a softer kind of intimacy, cradling the back of my head in one hand and brushing his fingertips across the line of my jaw with his other. Tilting my head to the side, I deepen the kiss and slip my tongue into his mouth to feel his, wanting him more intensely than I have ever felt before.

With a quiet moan, he presses his body closer to mine until the water laps dangerously at the edge of the bathtub again.

“We are going to soak our room if we do not get out of here,” I tell him, laughing faintly when we break apart to catch our breath. 

He frowns and picks up the bar of soap from the table beside the bath, handing it to me. “You are not leaving here until you are clean. I will contain myself and have some patience.”

Turning around so my back is leaning against Hubert’s chest, I lather up my hands with soap and set to work scrubbing my body clean. Meanwhile, he brushes through my hair, expertly freeing it of its tangles and washing the traces of ash and blood from it. When he is done, he plaits the wet strands into a braid and rests it over my shoulder. Then he proceeds to trail kisses across my neck and shoulders and back until I can hardly focus on what I am doing, my mind completely overcome with the sensation of his lips and tongue exploring my skin.

As soon as I am finished, I climb out of the bath and dry off while Hubert follows suit. Hardly have I set the towel aside when he is dragging me over to the bed. He stops to tuck the covers up over the dirty sheets then pulls me down atop the blankets and gathers me into his arms, kissing me with the same passion he did earlier.

My skin is hot and flushed from the bath and when he pushes me onto my back and kisses his way down my body, I swear it feels like it is on fire. The heat swells down with the bloodrush of arousal to my hardening cock and the moment his tongue brushes across it, I shiver and groan.

We should take it slow, make this intimate rejoicing of our survival a tender and romantic thing, but all self-control I have has deserted me in the face of a heart-pounding, breath-stealing  _ need _ to feel alive and relieved and loved. So even though it is selfish and perhaps a bit unromantic of me, I do not protest or insist on more foreplay. I just tangle my fingers in his hair and moan without thought for anyone overhearing as he drags his tongue up the length of my dick then takes it fully into his mouth.

“Yes,” I whimper and bite back the urge to curse as he sucks harder, working his lips and tongue with the passion and precision born of many nights of practice. “Oh god-  _ ah! _ Hubert, please, harder… harder.”

As he dips his head down to take me deeper and I feel the tight, choking pressure of his throat, I clamp my hand over my mouth to stifle a cry. Propping myself up on my elbows, I brush his hair off his forehead so I can see the look of devoted concentration on his face, his eyes shut tight, brow furrowed, face flushed and mouth wrapped around my cock – a messy, beautiful, intoxicating sight. 

I gasp out his name again and a few pleas to deities I do not believe in as he draws my body up to the peak of its pleasure and the orgasm rushes through me, my legs stiffening, toes curling and body shuddering as I cry out again and clutch at his hair so roughly it must hurt him.

He chokes as I come deep in his throat and pulls my dick out of his mouth as he coughs a little. Then he regains control and wipes the saliva and cum from his lips. Dipping his head back down, he licks the rest of the cum from the head of my cock and lavishes it in one last minute of attention as I collapse back against the covers and heave a sigh of soul-deep satisfaction.

“Come here,” I whisper, patting the space beside me. 

He presses a kiss to my thigh, then moves up to lie next to me. As he wraps his arms around my waist, I tuck my head in the crook of his neck and sigh again happily.

“I couldn’t bear to take it slow,” he says with a slightly embarrassed laugh. “I wanted you too badly.”

I groan and nuzzle his neck. “I wanted you too. I still do. Let go of me and get on your back.”

“Wait a moment,” he says, pulling me closer. “There is something on my mind and I wish to say it.”

Placing my hand on his cheek, I turn his head to face me and kiss him tenderly. “Tell me, my love.”

“When you and I began… this-” He falters for a second, for even though it has been nearly two years, we have never quite known what  _ this _ is, nor where it would lead to. We have accepted the limits of living only in the moment and never planning on any future. Perhaps the unspoken reason really was that it felt irrational to plan for a future neither of us knew for sure we would have. He kisses my forehead and continues. “I told you that I did not have a life of my own to give you.”

“And I told you it did not matter to me,” I remind him, worried suddenly that this will turn into yet another futile attempt of his to push me away.

“I know. And in some ways, that fact has not changed. Even now that I will not be fighting wars for Her Majesty, I will still be serving her. There is more work ahead of us and I have vowed to aid her in it for the whole of my life. But it struck me this morning that-” Again he pauses, choosing his words very carefully. “It was never quite that my life belonged to her. It was that my death did. If my duty called for me to lay down my life for her in the war, I would have done so unhesitatingly. I could not in good conscience promise you a life I had every intention of giving up if necessary.”

The idea makes my heart ache and I pull back to look him in the eyes and study the emotion in them as he continues, saying, “With the violence over and war behind us, that possibility has dramatically lowered. What I am trying to say is that although there is still a part of me that belongs to her, I think that now there is a part of me that doesn’t, a part that is… my own. And I want- I have always wanted-”

He lets go of me abruptly and gets onto his knees on the bed. When I sit up too, he takes my hand in both of his and bends his head down to kiss it with his eyes closed and a fervent expression on his face.

“Hubert,” I whisper. “I-”

“It’s yours,” he says, leaning his forehead against my hand. “Everything that I have that I am free to give is yours, should you choose to accept it.”

The stunned feeling his declaration evoked in me gives way to an overwhelming, dizzying joy. 

“Hubert,” I say again, my voice choked with emotion. He glances up at me with a searching look and I take his face in my hands and kiss him until my head stops reeling and I feel ready to put into words the answer pounding in my heart.

“I would be honored to spend my life with you,” I say, resting my forehead against his. He tries to kiss me again but I pull back to finish my thought. “I cannot even imagine what a life without war will be like for us, but I know that whatever new challenges it brings, I want to face them by your side the same as I faced these ones. And I promise you with all of my heart that I will love you deeper and more ardently than any man has ever been loved before.”

He slips his hand behind my neck and tugs me in for a kiss that ends up with us sprawled back across the blankets, hands running longingly across each other’s bodies.

“Hubert, I want to tell you-” I try to say in between kisses. “-that I-” His mouth on mine is insistent and it is hard to escape long enough to exclaim, “Let me speak, you horrible man!”

“We are done speaking,” he replies.

“I want to say that-”

He interrupts me again and I growl in frustration against his lips. It is unfair that he gets to make speeches and I have no chance to give him the long declaration I have been crafting in my mind for months, waiting for a moment like this.

“Put it in writing,” he says, hand sliding down my back to cup my ass and his mouth straying to my neck to bite at the tender skin below my ear. “Right now, I must-”

I interrupt him with a kiss this time because he is not allowed to get the last word and I yank his hands away from my body. Grabbing his hips, I push him down to lie on his stomach and climb on top of him. “If you are going to rudely deny me the chance to speak, I will find something else to do with my mouth,” I whisper in his ear, moving my hand down to his ass to trace my fingers in circles around his rim. He gasps and curses quietly.

Years from now, I may not remember the night we ended this war the way I remember the night we ended the last one. But I vow silently to remember this morning for the rest of my life, every messy, desperate kiss, every fumbling, passionate confession and every sensation I felt in my affection-starved body as he made love to me and every moan of pleasure I draw from him as I make love to him.

Continuing to tease him with my fingers, I kiss his neck and wish we had any kind of proper lubricant on hand so I could have him inside me in the way I am craving right now. But the frantic passion of the moment is not the kind felt on the eve of battle, when we would give each other everything we had in unspoken fear it might be our last chance. It is a desperation born simply of more love than I know how to contain and the desire to express it in every way possible. I need not worry about things left undone, for we have a lifetime ahead of us now to do them. 

Kissing my way down across his back, I lift his hips up a little and switch my fingers for my tongue, excitement thrilling in my mind when the sensation causes a ripple of pleasure to shudder through his body and a breathless, “ _ Fuck! _ ” followed by a long, low moan to escape his lips.

I pause for a second to lick my hand, then I slip it underneath him and clasp my fingers around his hard, leaking cock as my mouth returns to his rim. With both my tongue and my hand pleasuring him, I unravel him completely and soon he is gasping my name and swearing louder and more freely than he normally does.

Although I am getting a little out of breath and my neck is starting to ache, I am enjoying myself far too much to care and I fuck him more passionately until he hits his limit and comes hard and hot across my hand. 

The feeling of him clenching under my tongue and the euphoric groan he makes causes a rush of arousal to burn in my body and I let go of him to reach down and take my own cock in my hand. Continuing to tease him with my tongue, I buck into my grip and let his whimpers of overstimulation tip me over the edge so I come as well.

Panting for breath, I sit up and wipe my mouth with my clean hand, staring down with satisfaction at his naked body sprawled across the sheets and the look of bliss on his face.

“That was more eloquent than anything you could have possibly said,” he mumbles and I slap his ass in reply to the goading comment.

“I am very eloquent,” I say. “I am going to be an excellent Prime Minister.”

“You’ve already mastered the most effective means of political maneuvering,” he replies with a bit of a smirk.

Lying down next to him with a sigh, I say, “I did not make love to you hard enough if you are still coherent enough to mock me so needlessly.”

“I cannot promise you that my undying devotion means I will never mock you, my dear,” he says dryly.

I glare at him and he reaches over to brush the curls of hair that have been pulled free of my braid out of my face and tuck them behind my ear. 

“Now what was it you were going to say?” he asks. “I will stop being an ass and listen now.”

I find in this peaceful moment that for once I do not feel a need to deliver one of my impassioned speeches to reassure him of what I am feeling. So I just smile and say, “I love you and I believe that whatever lies ahead of us now, it is going to be better than anything we could have imagined. I am going to make you the happiest man alive, Hubert von Vestra. That is my promise to you. It does not need to be any more complicated than that, I suppose.”

He smiles back softly. “I have every faith that you will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! As always, hit me up if you have a specific theme/prompt you want to read! I always welcome y'all's requests!  
> Twitter: @lalexanderwrite  
> 


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